Castellanos faced the biggest out of his collegiate career with two out in the bottom of the ninth.
Having already surrendered a double to the gap to pinch hitter Bobby Wiginton to make the score 13-12, Castellanos had to get out of a one-out jam to end it. After getting Danny Hughes to fly out to center, with a man on third (Wiginton tagged up on the fly out) and two outs, Castellanos came back from a 3-0 count to get Robert Deeb to line out to Farkes for the final out.
“I knew my team was behind me,” Castellanos said. “I’d been in pressure situations before, but I was in high school. Nothing like this. I knew I had a lot of guys behind me who had faith in me, and that gave me confidence to do the job.”
Salsgiver hit home runs in his second and third at-bats to help the Crimson jump out to the big lead. He finished with five RBIs. Mackey hit a leadoff, first-pitch homer off the netting in left field with the wind blowing in after Brown’s big inning to give Castellanos a needed cushion.
“We were able to come back and say, here we go, let’s start hitting again,” Walsh said. “That was a big momentum breaker for us.”
Harvard 7, Brown 6
Farkes, who had gone 6-for-8 with two homers against Brown on Sunday, was welcomed back warmly by the Bears in his first plate appearance—he was nailed on the hand by Brown’s Chris Davidson. A warning was issued by the home-plate umpire, causing Brown coach Marek Drabinski to jump out of his dugout while Farkes trotted to first.
The play typified a bizarre win for the Crimson in which Farkes was hit on his other hand in the fifth and Drabinski—who argued no less than three calls for well over a minute—was ejected in the top of that inning.
“I’m not so sure those weren’t purpose pitches,” Walsh said. “We’ll see about that. Right now, we hope there’s no break.”
Sophomore Mike Morgalis pitched a complete game but allowed back-to-back home runs in the seventh to make the final score closer than the game really was. With the lead down to one run with one out, Morgalis got Kutler, one of the tougher outs in the Ivy League, to hit into a 1-3 grounder.
Morgalis struck out seven and allowed six runs, five earned.
“The good thing is, we never gave up the lead,” Walsh said. “When you’ve still got the lead, it helps you to stay aggressive, be active on the bases, and that helps. We never had to play behind today.”
Sophomore Ian Wallace hit a 1-2 pitch out of the park to make the score 3-1 in the fourth, and Harvard put four runs up in the top of the fifth, including a two-run double by sophomore Schuyler Mann.
Notes
Dartmouth beat Yale 12-4 and 13-11 to keep pace…Harvard committed four errors on the day and has committed at least one error in nine straight games...Senior Madhu Satyanarayana, who has been hampered by a pulled hamstring for most of the season, will start today’s game against Holy Cross.
—Staff writer Martin S. Bell can be reached at msbell@fas.harvard.edu.